//This is a fragment of a text I intend to use for an essay on Homer's epics and the historical background of them//

Over the years scholars (historians as well as archaeologist) have developed several ways to date the world which Homer describes in the epics Iliad and Odyssey. The epics might be reflecting Homer's age of the 8th century BC; they might be remembering an earlier time like the Mycenaean period, they might be conflating different ages or Homer made the whole thing up.1 These different kinds of views led to an ongoing debate in which old and new approaches still are coexisting. The old approaches deal with Homer's epics as historical documents which reflect the Heroic times of the Late Bronze Age, while more recent approaches make an amalgam of the poems dating to Bronze Age as well as Early Iron Age and the 8th century BC.2 All these opinions are based on the same evidence provided by anthropological studies on oral poetry and archaeological research; but the way scholars deal with the evidence differs a lot.    
This essay analyzes in short the arguments and methods of nine scholars who demonstrate a distinct opinion on the historical background of Homer's epics. //names and literature// As a result of this analysis I will present my own ideas about the historicism of Homer's poems.  
To Finley Homer's epics were "a picture of the Early Dark Age, the 10th and 9th centuries BC".3  He excluded the possibility that the epics refer to the Mycenaean world, because of the Linear B tablets but also of the absence of Mycenaean 'continuities' in the Iliad and Odyssey and far most because of the social values of Dark Age society.4 For making sense at that time, the stories must have fit in the 'set of believes' of the people who listened to them. Even when the poems were part of a cultural tradition, this tradition must be embedded in society for tradition is a social phenomenon.5 For example, the important role of gift-giving and gift-exchange in the poems is not just an idea of Homer but existed in many societies as comparative study revealed.6 //and so on//

Bibliography
Korfmann, M. 2002, Ilios, ca1200BC - Ilion, ca. 700 BC. Report on findings from archaeology, in Montanari, F. (ed), Omero tremila anni dopo, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma, 209-225.
Luce, J.V. 1998, Late Bronze Age trade and the Homeric tradition, RDAC, 55-66.
Finley, M.I. 1979, Appendix I, The world of Odysseus revisited, in Finley, M.I. The world of Odysseus, (2nd rev. edition), Harmondsworth, 142-157
Morris, I. 2001, The use and abuse of Homer, in Cairns, D. (ed), Oxford readings in Homer's Iliad, Oxford, 57-91.
1 Morris 2001, 90.
2 On the other hand, even nowadays some scholars state that Homer's work is historical. For this point of view see Luce 1998; Korfmann 2002.
3 Finley 1979, 153.
4 Finley 1979, 143-144, 154. The Linear B tablets revealed that Mycenaean society had a socio-political and economic organization that differed completely from the Homeric world. At the same time Finley points out that there were of course 'continuities'.  
5 Finley 1979, 147.
6 Finley 1979, 145-146.